Tree Talk: Artists Speak For Trees
Thursday, September 30
United States: 10am PT, 11am MT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET
EUROPE: Scotland/Ireland/England/Belgium/Germany/Portugal: 18:00 BST
Sara Ekholm Eriksson, Alicia Escott, Krista Leigh Steinke, Karen Marston
The entanglements of a forest are vast, complex and mysterious. Today artists seek to understand and express the interconnectedness of trees with all living beings. Members included in the online exhibition and book Embodied Forest will share their diverse artworks and ideas about our human relationship with trees and forests.
For our September 2021 Tree Talk, Sara Ekholm Eriksson will present her work Growth Rings, which tells the story of climatic changes during the lifetime of a 2400-year-old Sequoia tree. Alicia Escott will share her work with Live Oaks, examining the interface of human-built structures in ecologies evolved to burn. Krista Leigh Steinke will discuss her photographic project On the breath of a forest based in rural New York, where homemade pinhole cameras are distributed throughout a forest and left outside to be weathered by the elements. Karen Marston will speak about her recent series Fire Season inspired by the devastating mega fires raging from Australia to California and Siberia.
Tree Talk is moderated by Sant Khalsa, ecofeminist artist and activist, whose work has focused on critical environmental and societal issues including forests and watersheds for four decades.
Co-sponsored by Joshua Tree Center for Photographic Arts
Members and one guest are free. General Public can attend for a $10. Capacity is 100 participants. All participants MUST REGISTER.
Image: Sara Ekholm Eriksson, Årsringar (Growth Rings), 2019–20; Alicia Escott, Disarticulated Production, 2021; Krista Leigh Steinke, On the breath of a forest, 2014-ongoing; Karen Marston, Fountain, 2020.
Presenters:
Sarah Ekholm Eriksson's work Growth Rings incorporates the 2400-year-old Sequoia tree section positioned at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Through a projection on the tree, the artwork tells the story of climatic changes during its lifetime until now by mixing quotes from the impersonated tree’s own experiences and facts known to us from climate research on trees. Ekholm Eriksson is an MA student at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Sweden. She is interested in depicting scientific and ecological processes through installations with a wide spectrum of media and materials such as water, plants, wood, stone, and video. Eriksson often engages in collaborations and has previously worked with researchers, ecologists, biologists, musicians, and art historians. saraekholmeriksson.com
Image: Sara Ekholm Eriksson, Årsringar (Growth Rings), 2019–20, video projection, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm
Alicia Escott's work with Live Oaks examines the interface of human-built structures in ecologies evolved to burn. The work references gold-rush-era legacies of extraction, displacement and extinction, and subsequent gold-rushes (real-estate/technology). The meditation on these fire evolved trees oscillates from regeneration and possibly to desperation. The promise of acorns drawn on plastic from construction sites melted to form a new join of things torn apart: the unsettled convergence of human homes and non-human homes amid land coevolved with fire. Escott’s work has been shown in 100+ art institutions, galleries, and alternative spaces— including the Headlands, Berkeley Arts Center, YBCA, Berkeley Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbra. She/they have been Artist in Residence at Recology, The Growlery, Djerassi, Anderson Ranch, Lucid Art and Irving Street Projects. Escott is a founding member of 100 Days Action and The Bureau of Linguistical Reality. Her/their work has been in the Economist, The New Yorker, KQED, MOMUS, SFChronicle, and many others. aliciaescott.com
Image: Alicia Escott, Disarticulated Production, 2021, Approx 7 x 10 x 8 feet total, ink hand drawn on construction plastic vinyl, apple earbuds, burt pic pipe from the Sonoma fires, burt iPhone chargers, gold, like oak branches, madrone branches, redwood branches
Krista Leigh Steinke's work, situated between the photographic and the abstract, presents poetic reflections on time, place, perception, and the interconnection between human experience and the natural world. Her project, On the breath of a forest is based in rural New York, where homemade pinhole cameras are distributed throughout a forest and left outside to be weathered by the elements. The resulting work draws parallels to the human body, portraying the forest as a living creature. Steinke is an interdisciplinary lens-based artist and educator working in photography, moving image, collage, and installation. She regularly exhibits and screens her work in museums, galleries, and film festivals across the country, as well as internationally. Her work has received support from a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Puffin Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and a Fellowship from the Howard Foundation. She divides her time between Houston, TX and rural New York state. kristasteinke.com
Image: Krista Leigh Steinke, On the breath of a forest, 2014-ongoing, Archival pigment prints mounted on aluminum panels, 7 x 9" panels, grid dimensions variable
For over ten years, Karen Marston has been painting natural and not so natural disasters—and the blurring line between them—exploring a wide range of dramatic ecological phenomena effected by climate change. Her recent series, Fire Season was inspired by the devastating mega fires raging from Australia to California and Siberia. In this context the forest on fire embodies all of our fears of climate catastrophe and destruction, the majestic power and vulnerability of nature. Marston is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been seen in several recent solo exhibitions at New York's Owen James Gallery, Station Independent Projects and Storefront Bushwick among others. Marston also played an instrumental role for many years as President of the Board of NURTUREart Non-Profit. Originally from California, she earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and participated in the A.I.C.A. NY Studio Program. karenmarston.com
Image: Karen Marston, Fountain, 2020, oil on paper, 20" x 26"
